Full video reveals more about police confrontation

Many circulated copies of the video, filmed by Rai Goulsby, show roughly the first three minutes.

When I spoke with Goulsby on Wednesday, he was polite, but said he was getting paid for interviews and didn’t want to talk about the video without payment. He clarified that he talked briefly to The Seattle Times without getting paid.

Goulsby, 26, sold the clip to Inside Edition, which also interviewed him Wednesday.

When watching the recording full-screen on a large computer monitor, the item that some people believed may be a gun – near the 1:50 mark – appears to be a handkerchief or black plastic bag. KOMO radio reporter Travis Mayfield also watched part of the original file Wednesday and thought the item looked like a handkerchief.

Mayfield discussed parts of the video Wednesday on HLN; I was asked about the recording on the same channel and MSNBC.

At the 3:43 mark, Goulsby is heard addressing Walsh about hitting the girl with a closed fist. Walsh responds, “Yes, I did sir.”

Later, Goulsby is heard telling the officer “you just lost your badge.” The 17-year-old Walsh is trying to detain throws an elbow and says, “Get your (expletive) out of my (expletive), pervert.”

The 17-year-old and 19-year-old arrested use explicit language with Walsh and appear to resist some of his efforts. Several people in the crowd voice concerns about Wash’s treatment of the two arrested.

Backup officers, a man and woman, arrive about 4:30 after the recording starts. The man tells Goulsby, “You can take all the pictures you want, but back up.” About 6:20 into the recording, as the 19-year-old is in the back of Walsh’s patrol car, he appears to be reading her rights.

Goulsby is heard being concerned that Walsh will “rough her up” on the way to the precinct and says someone else should take her there.

That woman, Marilyn E. Levias, was arrested for allegedly obstructing the officer and is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Seattle Municipal Court.

Prosecutors are expected to make a charging decision by Friday on the 17-year-old, who was released from juvenile detention Tuesday. Seattlepi.com does not typically name juvenile suspects.

At least a dozen other officers arrived at the scene. A female officer searched the 17-year-old and South Precinct Officer Eric Beseler interviewed Goulsby as a witness.

“She put her arm on his shoulder like this and he socked her,” Goulsby is heard saying. “And then the whole altercation started from there.”

Beseler asked if Goulsby was recording from beginning and after Goulsby said “yeah, pretty much,” Beseler asked if police could get a copy of the video.

“Not right now, unfortunately,” Goulsby responded.

Beseler noticed the YouTube sticker on the camera and asked if the video would go on the video sharing website. Goulsby said he might do that, but that he wanted to call KIRO/7 because of the video’s content.

The officer asks if he has a handle – another term for a username – on YouTube so he can search for the video. The officer asked if he would go to KIRO first. Goulsby said probably because he rarely watches TV, but typically watches KIRO when he does. In what appears to be a joke, Beseler said he should expand his TV viewing.

One of the bystanders then shows a $27 urinating in public ticket he received earlier.

Another officer, who appears to be African-American, asks the young man, who appears to be a teenager, why he didn’t talk to him “brother to brother,” saying instead he acted brother-to-punk. It appeared that the officer was trying to have a conversation with the young man rather than a confrontation.

Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle President and CEO James Kelly, who was with the 17-year-old and supported her family at her Tuesday court hearing, said he wasn’t making any excuses for her actions with Walsh, “but two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“Shame on you,” he said in a Tuesday statement to Walsh, adding the officer overreacted. “The use of violence in the form of a full-blown fist to the face was wrong.”

Also on Tuesday, Seattle Police Guild President Rich O’Neill said Walsh did nothing wrong.

“If anything, I think he maybe waited a little too long to engage in force because I think he was trying to defuse the situation and calm people down and it was obvious from the audio anyway of the two individuals that they were not going to be calmed down,” O’Neill said. “They were not going to comply in any way.”

Walsh’s actions also drew criticism from the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Interim Seattle Police Chief John Diaz has launched a global review of arrest tactics in the wake of Goulsby’s video.